In 2014 and 2015, Vietnam Customer Service continued developing its strong platform in the following areas, to increase its agility in responding to customers.

In Planning & Leadership, a standardized forecasting methodology has been applied from 2014. It is part of Workforce Management, which utilizes accurate staffing figures to maximize service and minimize cost. Call forecasting accuracy improved, and the variance between actual and forecasted call volume reduced from -3.3%_2014 to 0.3%_2015. This allowed us to adjust our roster accordingly, leading to a Grade of Service within 10 seconds of at 94.3%, and an Abandoned Call Rate after 10 seconds of 0.9%.

In People and Process, from 2015, Performance Dialogues (PD) – structured, visual face-to-face conversations between CS management and advisors – are executed 15 minutes daily. During PD, teams discuss performance indicators, issues, root causes, corrective actions and best practices. The advisors take the responsibility for the team performance into their own hands, which helps to drive a culture of ownership and continuous improvement in an open and trustful atmosphere. This dialogue was an essential element supporting a year-on-year increase of 33% in the Employee Engagement score of Customer Care team in the yearly Employee Opinion Survey (97% in 2015 vs. 64% in 2014).

A standardized form of quality evaluation was implemented from September 2014, providing a systematic consolidation and helping to reduce time spent on analysis. It integrates a score summary, analysis sheets, and evaluation templates focusing on soft skills (Knowledge, Politeness, Helpfulness) and adherence to CS Processes across all types of customer interactions (e.g. booking, enquiry, tracing, complaint, etc.). Quality evaluation scores are on an upwards trend (95.0%_2014, 95.2%_2015 in Contact Center team; 96.9%_2014, 97.3%_2015 in Customer Care team, all above target 90%).

Rolled out in January 2014, the Insanely Customer Centric Culture (ICCC) is a cross-functional effort to systematically listen to our customers’ voice, fix issues right away, and drive an ICCC mindset and behavior in every employee. ICCC meetings with Cross-Functional Representatives are carried out monthly. The ICCC tracker score (quarterly external customers’ phone survey) of DHL is a significant lead over the next competitor- 12% higher. Net Promoter Approach (NPA) is DHL’s way to capture and enhance customer loyalty, measured by a Net Promoter Score, which shows an increase from 41%_2014 to 45%_2015. Straight To The Top (STTT) is opened from Jun’14 on our website where customers can send complaints directly to our General Director and CS Manager. 64 STTTs were received in 2014 and 202 in 2015.

To encourage excellence by recognizing CS advisors who received customer’s compliment from producing an outstanding work, we have applied STAR award in CS over many years, and opened the program to all other departments in 2015. This program has just been extended to CS ‘Everyday Heroes’ campaign, which encourages CS advisors to proactively and confidently share stories of how they delighted customers, using their own words.

In Performance Measurement, to maintain the request resolution rate above target, daily monitoring reports are applied from Jul’15. The reports, including both on-due and 1-day-before-due performance, give the team an early warning of closures to be done and if a backlog is building up in the following day. These systematic reports help to reduce time of data extracting and report preparation from 4 to 1.5 hours per day, and provide more visible, easier-to-follow-up views for CS advisors, as well as quickly tracking of under-performance.

With the above innovative accomplishments towards continuous improvement – what is good enough today is not good enough tomorrow!– Vietnam Customer Service continues its Insanely Customer Centric journey from Good to Great.